Can an enmity-riddled relationship between Winston Peters and Christopher Luxon survive this?
A few hours after we published a story ranking the coalition’s internal dust-ups in May, a senior figure in the Act Party got in touch with a pointed observation: NZ First had, by their count, initiated 10 of the incidents, National three and Act one.
The greater frustration for Act, of course, is that the provocateurs have prospered. Andrew Ketels, who was chief of staff for Act for 12 years until the end of 2025, writes in the Herald this morning that “National and Act have probably paid a price for infighting, but New Zealand First seems to have best avoided punishment in the polls”.
That was in part down to voters being accustomed to Winston Peters’ abrasive style, but the party had also run “a highly effective campaign for three years – carving out a clear identity, keeping itself at arm’s length from National and Act, and at times acting like an opposition inside government”.
The question is whether that Daliesque dynamic is durable or delicate. Specifically, whether it can survive the latest conflagration – one which would have played out after Ketels filed his column.
I’m referring, of course, to Stuart Nash, whose ambitions to return to the spotlight have dramatically succeeded, just not with the kind of drama he hoped for. Within hours of former National minister Chris Finlayson revealing the contents of a text from Nash calling Katie Nimon, the National member for Napier, the “laziest MP I have ever come across” and misrepresenting the time she had taken off after having a baby, the former Labour minister and New Zealand First candidate had brought parties from across the spectrum together in a show of unity not seen since everyone hated Opportunity.
Senior National MPs were genuinely furious at the characterisation of Nimon, widely and warmly regarded as a collegiate and hardworking MP. It’s true also that the party – as witnessed in the oddly presented consent pledge on Sunday – needs more than anything to rescue dismal popularity among women, especially women under 40. Hence Luxon’s choice to invoke the “manosphere” in lambasting Nash.
Despite – or because of – reports of Nash’s resignation seeping out via The Platform last night, Luxon rushed to declare in a 9.30pm social media post that Nash would have no seat in any cabinet led by him. NZ First was given no heads-up. Peters, on duty at the East Asia Summit, probably saw it float up on his Twitter feed like the rest of us.
It was the most assertive the prime minister has been over any perceived coalition partner recalcitrance since issuing a statement saying his foreign minister had “put politics ahead of the national interest” over the release of documents relating to the New Zealand position on the US strikes of Iran.
Peters has little, if any, respect for Luxon. The disdain is palpable. When he came out in April declaring Luxon had made a fool of himself and a rod for his back by calling a confidence vote in his own leadership, Peters was not pursuing a premeditated strategy, he was just reflexively aghast.
As he watches from the distance of Manila the dusty old bag of Nash fireworks detonate, sprinkling embers across the place, Peters will be fuming at the man who had already revealed his character as an anatomist. He may even be contemplating whether collecting so many retreads this year was such a good idea. But more than all of that, his blood is likely to boil at the sight of Luxon announcing he’ll decide which NZ First MPs will or won’t sit in his future cabinet.
The trouble for them all, of course, is that these scenes do nothing to increase confidence that such a cabinet will assemble at all. That ranking of incivilities is only a couple of months old and already it needs a big update. Simeon Brown, with a near-literal flourish of paternalism, is calling his coalition partners kids squabbling in the back seat. Peters says at every opportunity that National has failed on the economy. Nicola Willis calls him “confused”, which, presumably as intended, clouds the 81-year-old in red mist.
Not to be outdone, Shane Jones, of butter chicken tsunami fame, says of Luxon’s welcome to the Indian prime minister, “the next time you go to an ethno-nationalist rally to receive a foreign leader, take off your knee pads”. What did he mean? It was “an insinuation about him performing oral sex on a visiting foreign leader”, says Chris Hipkins. Jones, eyes wide as a choir boy, said not at all. It was really a reference to bowing down. Or gardening. Or volleyball. Luxon wasn’t buying it. Jones had been “crass and unprofessional”.
It all makes Act’s friendly fire – such as the condescension towards Luxon by their new box-office signing Paul Henry – look downright tender. But they’re all at it.
The fundamental problem for the incumbent coalition here is that they’re all scragging in the same sandpit. With every day the three governing parties keep fighting each other, the alternative looks stronger, more stable.
After all, isn’t the core argument from National and co meant to be that the other lot – Labour, the Greens and Te Pāti Māori – would make a coalition of chaos? Hasn’t that been the argument of every campaign at least since Steven Joyce sent out on to the water to an Eminesque soundtrack a boat full of people rowing in different directions? It’s a tricky case to make when your own boat looks like it could capsize at any moment.
